The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.Romanes, George John
Science
The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.
Romanes, George John
Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Romanes, George John, 1848-1894
Two papers of his were read at the Royal Society in October 1892. The
first described experiments undertaken by Mr. Romanes, the primary
object of which was to ascertain whether seeds which had been kept
out of contact with air for a lengthy period of time still possessed
the power of germination. The method adopted was as follows: a
certain number of seeds were taken from each packet, mustard, cress,
beans, peas, &c., being the kinds employed, and having been weighed
in a chemical balance were sealed up in tubes which had previously
been exhausted of air, and kept exposed to the vacuum for a period
of fifteen months. At the end of that time they were removed from
the tubes and sown in flower-pots buried in moist soil. In some
cases, after the seeds had been in the vacuum tubes for three months,
they were transferred to other tubes charged with pure gases, such
as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, or with aqueous or
chloroform vapour, and there kept for a further period of twelve
months, when they were sown as before.
In all cases the same number of seeds, of similar weights to those
sealed up in the tubes, were taken from each packet, kept in ordinary
air for the fifteen months, and then sown as control experiments.
The results clearly showed that the germinating power of the seeds
was hardly, if at all, affected either by being exposed to the vacuum
or to the atmospheres of the various gases and vapours. Further, in
no single case, in the hundreds of seeds so treated, did the plants
produced from them differ from the standard types grown from the
control seeds even in the smallest degree.
The second paper described experiments in heliotropism, which had
been undertaken by Mr. Romanes with the object of ascertaining
whether plants would bend towards a light that is not continuous, but
intermittent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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